I’ve partially deciphered the text as “Machine wash cold with like colors. Only non-chlorine bleach when needed. Tumble dry low. […] Only dry cleaning. Made in Korea.” The remaining text seems to be “Colour by numbering” but that doesn’t seem to make any sense.

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

This “murder mystery novel” is quite unusual in that (a) it starts at chapter 2, (b) it has footnotes, drawings, and an appendix consisting of a proof of a mathematical theorem, and (c) the murderer is revealed halfway through the novel.

So I think it is not a “real” murder mystery novel (hence the scare quotes in the previous paragraph), and, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, that is the curious incident.

Although the story is told from the viewpoint of a 15-year-old boy, I found the observations on language (literal and figurative), writing (how to write detective fiction), the nature of the mind (how a normal person’s way of thinking differs from that of an autistic person, or of an animal, or of a computer), and mathematics very deep. I particularly like how a wide variety of mathematics is presented (probability, chaos, games, tessellations).

A quote from Wikipedia mentions that the book “was published simultaneously in separate editions for adults and children.” It seems that my copy has a few differences from the version that Wikipedia refers to. For example, Wikipedia mentions that the lead character is given a Cocker Spaniel puppy at the end, but in my copy of the book, the puppy is a Golden Retriever.

I found the ending quite sad, although most people would probably consider it a happy ending.

The first B-52’s album that I bought was a Cosmic Thing cassette. I sent a letter to a fan club whose postal address was listed in the cassette sleeve, and I got an issue of a fan club newsletter as well as the photo shown above.

The signatures are printed on the photo (not handwritten) and the photo’s size is 4 inches by 5.25 inches. I can’t seem to find this picture on the internet, but the closest photo I could find is one without the signatures. The photo seems to be part of six photos included in a Cosmic Thing press kit released on June 27, 1989. The photograph is by Janette Beckman and has a 1989 copyright belonging to Reprise Records. Note that the fifth member of the band, Ricky Wilson, passed away in 1985.

I have a copy of a 20-page Texas Instruments brochure (CL435C) made in 1982. I have high-resolution scans of the pages, but I’m only posting thumbnail versions here. A low-resolution file in portable document format is available here.Continue reading ““This is THE Home Computer””